ED Consolidated Edison Inc

By Scott Calvert 

The heat wave over a large section of the U.S. is again wrapping millions of people in oppressive heat and humidity, a day after record temperatures were set from the Ohio Valley to the East Coast.

"It's going to be another scorcher across the Central and Eastern U.S.," said National Weather Service meteorologist Rich Otto. But he said a cold front will bring cooler air starting Monday, and by Tuesday temperatures will be normal or below normal in much of the country east of the Rockies.

About 72 million people are under excessive-heat warnings Sunday, down from about 128 million on Saturday, according to the weather service. High temperatures are expected to reach the upper-90s to near 100 degrees from eastern Kansas into the Ohio Valley and from the mid-Atlantic into parts of New England.

High humidity will make it feel like 105 degrees or worse in areas such as the Interstate 95 corridor from Boston to Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Otto said. He said the heat index could hit or eclipse 110 degrees in central New Jersey, eastern Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula, which includes Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Power companies in the greater New York region had crews working throughout the weekend to respond to scattered outages. Consolidated Edison Inc., the utility that powers most of the city, expects to set a record for Sunday power usage, eclipsing the record of 11,669 megawatts set Aug. 14, 2016, a spokesman said.

In Cincinnati, fans arriving at sweltering Great American Ball Park for Saturday evening's Reds-Cardinals baseball game heard a wintry mix of songs over the stadium sound system, including "Let It Snow," "Frosty the Snowman" and Foreigner's "Cold as Ice."

Aaron Sharpe, a DJ who picks the stadium's songs, said his instinct was to play heat-related songs -- but he decided to go cold. "These people are hot enough as it is, we don't need to remind them of that fact," he said.

Saturday's heat broke or tied records in a number of East Coast cities, Mr. Otto said. Millinocket, Maine, reached 93 degrees, tying a record for the date. Manchester, N.H., set a record for the date of 97 degrees, breaking a mark set in 1949. And it hit 99 degrees at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, the highest on record for July 20.

At the same time, about 40 U.S. cities on Saturday tied or broke records for the highest minimum temperature on that date, as overnight temperatures remained in the high-70s or above 80 degrees across much of the Ohio Valley, mid-Atlantic and New England.

In Annapolis, Md., Saturday's sultry low of 84 degrees broke a record for July 20. On Saturday, New York's Central Park didn't get below 82 degrees. That tied the record-high minimum for the date and was two degrees below the warmest low temperature observed for any date since record-keeping began back in 1869: 84 degrees.

--Keiko Morris contributed to this article.

Write to Scott Calvert at scott.calvert@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 21, 2019 14:48 ET (18:48 GMT)

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